Category: Written Media / Books
Dr. Thaer Ahmad, emergency room physician and assistant program director of the Advocate Christ Emergency Medicine Residency Program, discusses his recent experience volunteering at the Al Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip.
Total Chaos: What A Palestinian American Doctor Saw In Gaza
New Testament Love and Old Testament Standards
There seems to be some drags and delays when playing the video. I have tried it on two different computers and it happens at that same time marks, so I think it is in the original. But the message is worth posting. I think basically most religious people of the modern time are moving from the crime / punishment style of believing or a punishing god, and much more to a welcoming and kinder loving god. Time will tell which side wins in the god civil war. Hugs. Scottie
Let’s talk about the X-men changing….
Some Joe my god stories about right wing thugs and republican cultists
In a press release from DeSantis’ office, the governor claimed Florida book bans are a “hoax,” arguing the state has simply “empowered parents to object to obscene material in the classroom.”
Stew Peters, an avowed Hitler fan and Holocaust denier, has called for executing Anthony Fauci, Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, and multiple prominent Democrats. Despite all that, elected Republicans regularly appear on his show.
God’s Greatest Hypocrisy
I know many of the people who follow my Play Time don’t care for videos, and also many are not interested in bible stuff. However even though this is an animated and a bit over the top portrayal of god, it does lay out some of the biggest sexual hypocrisies of the bible including the one man / one woman joke that many insist the rest of the world follow. Hugs. Scottie
COLORADO SPRINGS: FAR-RIGHT INFLUENCERS MADE LGBTQ PEOPLE INTO TARGETS
An the thing that hurts the worst is the haters / racists are proud of what they are doing, loving the attention, happy with the harm they are inflicting / inciting on others. They seem to feel that anyone different from them just shouldn’t be allowed in society, must be removed. The Russia model of life. Please take notice of the date. It was worthy read and important reporting then. Since then it has gotten much worse. Please help our LGBTQIA community members, especally the kids that in that group of people. They do know who they are, who they are attracked too, even if they have sexual or gender feelings at all. But they all know pain, hurt, fear, longing to belong, and need accpetance along with protection. Hugs. Scottie
The mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs, which saw a 22-year-old man charged with hate crimes and murder on Monday, came after years of intensifying anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, acts of violence and intimidation, and discriminatory legislation from far-right individuals and groups, including powerful Republican politicians.
These actors have made LGBTQ Americans into targets: of hateful social media posts that direct harassment, threats, and attacks at schools, hospitals, and individuals; of abuse, intimidation, and violence from hate groups; of laws that limit their care or censor information about gender and sexuality.
ANTI-LGBTQ INFLUENCERS CHANNELING HATE
A cluster of online influencers have ramped up bigoted and conspiracy-laced messaging in the last two years, directing hostile attention at drag shows, businesses, Pride festivals, children’s hospitals, and other places where LGBTQ people come together or receive care.
Many such peddlers of fear and disinformation about LGBTQ people – including the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh, his boss Ben Shapiro, and Candace Owens – took to Twitter in the wake of the shooting to attack “the left” and “Democrats” for drawing the obvious link between months of heightened anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and homophobic and transphobic murders. The attack, which killed five people and injured 25, took place on the eve of the Transgender Day of Remembrance, though it’s unknown if the shooter chose the date on purpose.
For her part, Chaya Raichik greeted news of the mass shooting in Colorado with a post on Twitter directing her followers’ attention to a youth-oriented LGBTQ nonprofit in that state and two state representatives who had expressed support for it.
Since early 2021, Raichik has posted a stream of transphobic and homophobic messages on platforms including Twitter, Facebook, Substack, and far-right favorite, Gab, under the pseudonym “Libs of TikTok.” Her typical operating procedure involves spotlighting LGBTQ users of the platform TikTok, especially trans people, and targeting them individually for mockery and abuse.
She helped popularize the anti-LGBTQ slur, “groomer,” which falsely equates non-heterosexual sexualities and non-cisgender gender identities with pedophilia. The “groomer” smear also plays into a conspiracy theory that underpins the propaganda of Raichik and other like-minded influencers: that LGBTQ people and their sympathizers have entered mainstream institutions to prey on children, recruit them to “transgenderism” and divide them from their families.
Joshua Thurman, center, gets comforted by friends at a makeshift memorial near Club Q on November 20, 2022 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Thurman was inside the club when the shooting began. An attacker opened fire in a gay nightclub late Saturday night killing five people and wounding at least 25, officials said. The club said the suspect was subdued by patrons and Colorado Springs police said he was taken into custody and hospitalized for treatment of his injuries. (Photo by Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)Raichik has also branched out into anti-Black racism, with tweets denying that George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, mocking the death of Ma’Khia Bryant, and taking pains to deny the existence of systemic racism. She has directed outrage towards schools offering racially inclusive curriculums.
Originally, Raichik used her platform to single out LGBTQ people and school teachers with inclusive approaches to education, many of whom would subsequently receive harassment and death threats. But her online schtick has evolved to encompass campaigns against school districts, libraries and hospitals.
Hospitals and medical workers across the country have been subject to harassment and even bomb threats after being targeted in posts from Raichik and others including Matt Walsh. In June, members of the Proud Boys hate group attacked a Drag Queen Story Hour event at a San Lorenzo, California public library after Raichik highlighted it. Alameda County Sheriff’s Office investigators reportedly said that Libs of TikTok had caused the attack.
Later that month, more Proud Boys tried to break into a bar that was scheduled to host a drag event after Raichik alerted her followers to the event.
Also in June, Hatewatch reported that Raichik had posted about a Pride event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, days before police thwarted an attempted disruption of the event by white nationalist hate group Patriot Front.
Security experts have described Raichik’s output as “stochastic terrorism,” by which they mean that her hateful rhetoric is calculated to promote violence in some proportion of her followers.
Her posts frequently contain false information. Raichik has presented fake curriculum materials as if they were real and presented covert recordings of uninformed responses from non-medical hospital staff as if they represented treatment policies at the facility.
Her habit of spreading hate and disinformation has seen Raichik briefly suspended from the platforms she is active on, including Twitter. Since Elon Musk acquired the platform, however, Raichik has availed herself of the opportunity to purchase a “blue check,” and has even engaged in ableist banter with the new proprietor.
Raichik tried hard to maintain her anonymity as the author of the hate account, but the Washington Post unmasked her in April, noting that Raichik’s “content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers.”
Raichik has been a guest on the Joe Rogan Experience, and her content has been promoted by far-right media figures and influencers including Tucker Carlson, Glenn Greenwald, Jesse Watters, Laura Ingraham and Donald Trump Jr.
Her tweets frequently form the basis of content pushed out by right-wing media – from items on Carlson’s Fox News show to dozens of articles in so-called ” pink slime” junk news sites.
More disturbingly, Raichik and other anti-LGBTQ influencers have shaped policy by encouraging divisive campaigning and mustering support for anti-LGBTQ laws.
DESANTIS DANCES TO RAICHIK’S TUNE
In March, Christine Pushaw, press secretary to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, defended the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill with anti-LGBTQ smears accusing people of “grooming” children.
The bill, which DeSantis signed into law later that month, would prevent teachers from discussing gender and sexuality in any way with children in kindergarten through third grade. Critics have pointed out that the rule would prevent children with LGBTQ parents from participating in age-appropriate activities like making family trees. The bill also allows state intervention on any discussion of gender and sexuality in public schools through high school.
Also in March, Pushaw credited Raichik’s account with having “opened her eyes” to conspiracy-minded views on schools’ approaches to gender and sexuality in the classroom.
This was evident in scores of interactions between Pushaw and Raichik on the platform stretching back to June 2021, at the beginning of Raichik’s focus on anti-LGBTQ campaigning.
Florida’s law is just one of many recent pieces of state-level legislation across the U.S. targeting LGBTQ people, and especially trans people. Five other states have passed laws that censor classroom discussion of gender and sexuality, and four more require parents to be notified ahead of such discussions.
Eighteen states, meanwhile, have passed laws banning trans women and girls from competing in K-12 girls and women’s sports. Some of these laws also ban their participation at the college level.
In Arizona and Arkansas, gender-affirming care for trans youth is banned, and in Alabama providing such care is a felony crime. Other states, including Texas, have attempted to pass similar laws. The American Academy of Pediatrics laid out their best practices for gender-affirming care in 2018, highlighting in particular that such care improves mental health outcomes for trans youth, especially in contrast to “conversion” models of intervention. Contrary to persistent disinformation from right-wing reactionaries, such care never includes surgical or chemical castration.
As far back as 2016, many states attempted to pass so-called “bathroom bills” mandating that public restrooms in state-owned buildings could only be used by people according to the sex assigned on their birth certificates. Three states – Alabama, Oklahoma and Tennessee – still have such laws on their books. Missouri and South Dakota, meanwhile, prohibit schools from adding LGBTQ-specific provisions to schools’ nondiscrimination policies.
ANTI-LGBTQ HATE ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL
In 2022, encouraged by political operatives like Christopher Rufo, many Republicans made “anti-woke” messages targeted at LGBTQ people the centerpiece of their midterm campaigns.
In practice, this meant an unprecedented volume of demonizing anti-trans ads, funded by well-heeled PACs like the American Principles Project, a creature of far-right billionaire Richard Uihlein.
Anti-trans political ads did not stop on Election Day. On Monday, Herschel Walker’s campaign released an ad whipping up fear about trans girls and women competing in sports according to their gender identity, which referred to them as “biological males.” Walker has been delivering regular anti-trans stump speeches during his effort to unseat Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia, where the candidates now face a runoff.
Some commentators suggested that the GOP has employed this strategy to mobilize white Evangelical Christian voters, so that they would turn out in sufficient numbers to neutralize the backlash against the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned 50 years of legal precedent safeguarding access to abortion.
Rufo, a Gig Harbor, Washington based far-right propagandist and a fellow at the hard-right Manhattan Institute, was initially prominently involved with the conservative campaign to demonize critical race theory (CRT), which the right used as a proxy for all forms of inclusive education.
In August, Rufo explained to the New York Times that he had advocated for Republicans to pivot from anti-CRT campaigning to attacking LGBTQ-inclusive curriculums. He told the newspaper,”The reservoir of sentiment on the sexuality issue is deeper and more explosive than the sentiment on the race issues.”
Days before that profile was published, Rufo appeared alongside DeSantis at the signing of the Stop W.O.K.E. Act, which bans workplaces and schools from teaching that any person is privileged due to their race or sex and was the culmination of DeSantis’s multi-faceted public fight with the Disney corporation.
Many commentators – including some Republicans – have attributed the GOP’s failure to generate a “red wave” election to the malicious anti-LGBTQ messaging Rufo recommended. Based on the lukewarm outcome, such rhetoric either did not resonate with, or repelled voters around the country.
That rhetoric did pay off for DeSantis, however, who won almost 60% of the gubernatorial vote, led his party to large majorities in both houses in the legislature, and helped elect a slate of hand-picked school board candidates who were also running on platforms that opposed inclusive curriculums.
His successes have seen DeSantis touted as a possible 2024 election candidate, raising the prospect that the use of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and policy as political tactics will continue on the national stage.
ANTI-LGBTQ HATE IN COLORADO
In Colorado, meanwhile, far-right figures – including Republican politicians – also actively spread smears, conspiracy theories, and falsehoods about LGBTQ people in the months leading up to Saturday’s mass shooting.
Not long after she was first elected to the House of Representatives, Lauren Boebert, the far-right Republican congresswoman for Colorado’s 3 rd District, responded to the passage of the federal Equality Act with transphobic remarks claiming trans people would spy on “young girls” in school locker rooms.
Boebert – who has embraced the QAnon conspiracy theory, hurled Islamophobic slurs at a fellow congresswoman, and amplified Donald Trump’s false claims about a stolen 2020 election – narrowly won re-election this month.
Colorado Springs, where the shooting took place, has itself has long been a hub for the Christian Right, which for decades has pumped out anti-LGBTQ propaganda in the name of a narrow and exclusionary definition of family.
In the 1990s, Colorado Springs’s Focus on the Family led the fundamentalist charge in support of Amendment 2, a Colorado ballot measure that banned municipalities from including LGBTQ people in their anti-discrimination policies. Though the initiative passed in 1992, in 1995 the Supreme Court found that it violated the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
More recently, evangelical churches have reportedly advocated for fundamentalist candidates in school board elections, but still manage to retain their nonprofit status despite prohibitions on electioneering.
The SPLC’s hate map lists four anti-LGBTQ hate groups in the state, with two – the Family Research Institute and the Pray in Jesus Name Project – headquartered in Colorado Springs. The state also plays host to active chapters of other hate groups who have taken violent or disruptive actions against LGBTQ people, like the Proud Boys and Patriot Front.
Since the nadir of Amendment 2, Colorado has evolved to boast one of the most progressive policy slates for LGBTQ rights in the country.
But more liberal laws have not made the state immune from the right-wing moral panic sweeping the country.
Proud Boys attempted to disrupt Denver drag shows as early as 2019. Denver-based drag performers told reporters this year of a new atmosphere of confrontation and hostility at child-friendly performances around the state.
Now five are dead, at least 25 are injured, and an unknown number are traumatized for life by an act of violence primed by conspiracy thinking and hateful propaganda.
Photo by Helen H. Richardson/Media News Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
For more resources, visit ONEColorado. If you were affected by the attack and need to access mental health resources, community support or you’d like to get in touch with law enforcement as a victim or witness, visit coloradosprings.gov/clubq. Finally, if you would like to donate to help the victims of the tragedy, visit Colorado Healing Fund.
GA Senate Advances “Don’t Say Gay” Bill After Hearing From Homocons, Opponents Weren’t Allowed To Speak
Notice they let only the anti-trans bigots speak, to back up the unpopular and unneeded laws. They then abruptly ended the debate, preventing the dozens of attendees opposed to the bill from speaking. Please notice the large number of people apposed to the bill that the republicans not only did not allow to speak but ignored. In the minds of the republicans their hate is the only thing that matters. These are the last gasps of desperate fundamentalist bigot haters to attack tolerance and acceptance. I laugh at the idea that these republicans are claiming it is the trans people only they hate, but as we have seen in other states they started with trying to stop trans kids in schools, and moved to trying to stop all the LGBTQIA people everywhere in public. Also these bills are always directed at public schools, the religious ones tend to be more conservative and the more wealthy secular ones the wealthy people don’t want their schools messed with by bigots. Hugs. Scottie
The Georgia Recorder reports:
A controversial bill dubbed Georgia’s version of “Don’t Say Gay” moved forward in a Senate committee Tuesday after three years of work and multiple failures to move, largely over Republican opposition to the inclusion of private schools. The bill passed committee on a 6-3 party line vote during a committee meeting in which proponents were given 15 minutes to speak but opponents did not receive time to talk. Dozens of people attended the meeting.
Jeff Cleghorn, an attorney who called himself a gay rights advocate opposed to gender ideology, said LGBTQ+ acceptance has increased because of the hard work of gay, lesbian and bisexual activists, but he said transgender people have attempted to “piggyback” off that struggle. “SB 88 is necessary because the former gay rights movement has been hijacked by those pushing this dishonest gender ideology on children,” he said.
The Los Angeles Blade reports:
Immediately after the bill’s sponsor spoke about the bill, he ceded the floor to Jeff Cleghorn, a gay anti-trans activist who calls transgender people “mentally ill sex fetishists” and regularly shares content from groups like Gays Against Groomers and Libs of TikTok.
Following an incendiary speech in which he advocated for separating transgender individuals from the LGBTQ+ community, Republicans allowed four people to speak.
These included a former president of the Young Republicans, a representative from Gays Against Groomers, and a representative from the Georgia Log Cabin Republican. They then abruptly ended the debate, preventing the dozens of attendees opposed to the bill from speaking.
Jeff Cleghorn, an attorney who called himself a gay rights advocate opposed to gender ideology,
Don’t make me post it again.
*sigh*
I’m going to have to post it again, aren’t I.
Any member of our community that doesn’t support trans rights doesn’t deserve to be part of the community at all.
Any member of the human community that doesn’t support everyone’s rights doesn’t deserve to be part of the community at all.
Piggy back my ass. Trans persons have been standing alongside of us since day one. That queen needs a little snap out of it action. I could handle that.
The fact is that drag queens and trans have been with us gay men since the beginning. They were there in the stonewall bar when the cops raided it.
Here is the PROOF! Marsha P. Johnson at the First Christopher Street Liberation Day March, 1970. Leonard Fink / LGBT Community Center Archive.
It is always shocking to discover trans-phobic gays among us. I stopped reading Americablog long ago when it’s owner, John Aravosis, was increasingly saying why should “we” help “them” as if we are not them.
No one is free until we are all free!
Fuck off. Do you think they’ll stop at Trans folks?
Gays, Blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, Atheists, Mormons, Catholics, they’ll keep narrowing the scope of acceptable people because Authoritarianism only thrives when there’s an Other to villainize.
My niece is now my nephew and is much happier that way. I’ll say no more.
Mine as well
Ashley to Oliver.
Oliver is so much happier than Ashley ever was.
living your authentic life is always best.
They are desperate to slam through as much hate bills as possible before they get their asses handed to them in November
” in which proponents were given 15 minutes to speak but opponents did not receive time to talk.”
WTF?
“SB 88 is necessary because the former gay rights movement has been hijacked by those pushing this dishonest gender ideology on children,” he said.”
What the ever loving fuck?
That “former gay rights movement” was lead by transexuals and drag queens…
I am so fucking pissed
I often don’t feel well or have mind fog. Sometimes l get busy or for some other reason I need to take extra medications. Strong amounts of morphine, muscle relaxers, others. Everything makes my mind foggy. Plus last year I had a TIA ischemic event that messed with my ability to think and even speak properly. Also sometimes I just don’t feel up to dealing with other blog posts and even comments.
So I developed a system of saving open chrome pages of posts or comments in tabs, and building tabs up in different days windows. Sometimes I end up with 6 or 8 open windows saved with over 400 tabs in them combined. Over the last 6 or so weeks I had 8 open windows with over 60 to 80 tabs each. I could even close them and shut down the computer, as long as I did not clean the history.
I have three utility programs that are set to be run manually that clean the entire computer, including the internet browsers histories. Set to be run manually. Well one of those updated this morning. I never thought much of it, it happens a lot automatically. This time it bit me hard in the ass. See this time it reset my clean the browsers settings to automatically when closed. I needed to do some updates and restart the computer. No problem as I could close the tabs and then when the computer updated and restarted I could just reopen the saved tabs. I let the updates happen and restarted the computer.
When the computer restarted, I noticed CCleaner running. That seemed strange. I realized why when I opened chrome, opened the history to restore the more than 6 weeks of saved tabs full of comments and posts to find … everything gone! WTF. I checked the history on other devices, it was there, but the history for Play Blogger was gone. Damn it all to …
Seems when CCleaner updated, it changed the cleanup settings to automatically when closed. When I closed the browser windows the program cleaned the history.
I will try the hardest way to do comments, by going back through the admin board. But if you did leave an unanswered comment in the last 7 weeks, please let me know, I can look up the post to see the comments. I am so frustrated. And just want to forget the entire thing and go watch videos and play Halo. Hugs. Scottie
Tennessee Approves Bill Allowing Anybody To Refuse Officiating At Same-Sex Weddings Because Of Jesus
Another attempt to exempt “Christians” or anyone who wants to discriminate against the gays from laws requiring equal treat of everyone. It says that if you don’t like the gays or the trans, you can just not do your job, regardless of the fact that is what your job is. Think about how horrible these laws are, think of what they are trying to accomplish. They send the message that Christians are the most privileged highest level of person in society, automatically. It also sends the messaged that the LGBTQIA, especially the gays and trans, are the lowest of the low in society. The goal, to drive the society / public back to the 1950s, erasing all the equality and advancements in tolerance / acceptance. The goal is removing the gays / trans from public view and this is done by denying them equal treatment under the law. If you think these laws sound OK try rewording them. It is OK not to serve or do your job is you believe it is wrong for black people to be married, or mixed races marriage. You can refuse to do your job and not take pictures of a wedding because it has a Jewish person and a Catholic. You can refuse to cater a weeding if the people getting married were once married before and now are divorced. If you think the examples are wrong then it is wrong to do this to gay or trans people. If you think the examples are correct then you are saying everyone gets to know and judge everyone else and screw the people you dislike or hate. This is simply hate made in to law driven by religion. Laws in a secular country are by definition not religious edicts, they are civil. If you want religion to rule you need to move to a theocracy. Notice a theocracy is not a democracy. Hugs. Scottie
The Tennessean reports:
Hours after a bill allowing marriage officiants to decline to solemnize weddings if they have moral objections received final passage from lawmakers, a vibrant crowd rallied on Capitol Hill advocating against a slate of bills aimed at placing new restrictions on Tennessee’s LGBTQ community.
Senate Bill 596, which would allow officiants to decline to perform weddings, passed the Tennessee Senate without debate along party lines on Monday evening. The bill passed the House last year, and will head to Gov. Bill Lee for his signature.
Sen. Mark Pody, R-Lebanon, who sponsored the bill, told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee this month that the goal of his bill is to provide clarity on whether officiants are required to perform marriages.
Truthout reports:
The bill wouldn’t just apply to wedding officiants and religious leaders — it also amends Tennessee Code Section 36-3-301, which applies to public government officials, including county clerks who handle marriage licenses. The legislation would allow those individuals, too, to refuse to “solemnize” a marriage based on their own religious convictions.
It’s unclear whether Republican Gov. Bill Lee will sign the bill into law. Lee has signed a slew of anti-LGBTQ bills since becoming governor, including one allowing state-funded foster care agencies to legally deny LGBTQ people the ability to serve as foster parents. Since 2015, more than a dozen anti-LGBTQ bills have become law in Tennessee.
Pody has appeared here many times for his attacks on same-sex marriage. In 2016, he sought to “nullify” the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling.
In 2017, he sponsored a bill calling for Tennessee to defy Obergefell entirely, and literally fled protesters at his press conference.
In 2019, he filed the “Tennessee Natural Marriage Bill” that would void same-sex marriages, something he says God told him to do.
In 2020, he filed a fourth attempt to make the bible the official book of Tennessee. In 2021, he filed a bill that would allow fathers to block abortions by their partners.
Then can’t all business owners then refuse service to anyone with different beliefs than themselves?
The bill wouldn’t just apply to wedding officiants and religious leaders — it also amends Tennessee Code Section 36-3-301, which applies to public government officials, including county clerks who handle marriage licenses.
Cool, I hope these do refuse to handle homo marriage licenses, they can get sued to high hell and the gays will get a nice little payout.
Sounds good to me, keep it up religious bigots, its taxpayer money you’re handing right to the gays.
Yeah. Drag them to federal court. Fuck Tennessee.
Its the only way to win against them.
How do you intend to collect this nice little payout?
There’s only one way to get a Republican to honor the Constitution. A lawsuit ain’t it.
Oh, we’ve already got Kim Davis, this will just go the same way.
These states, repeatedly, pass unConstitutional laws and they lose in court. I guess its time for TN to give it a try.
They’ll lose at every court this is tried in, the fed law is clear on this. Its why this jackasses other legislation has failed.
Beer guy and the Handmaid say hold my beer.
Another good Christian, shitty human
In his circles, there’s little difference.
Scottie's Playtime 